1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to storing and managing data, and a method and apparatus for managing a parental level of an optical disc.
2. Background of the Related Art
Conventionally, an optical disc capable of recording and storing a large amount of digital data is exemplified by, for example, a Compact Disc (CD) having a recording capacity of about 650 Mbytes, a Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) having a recording capacity of about 4.7 Gbytes, and a Blu-ray Disc (BD) having a recording capacity of about 23 Gbytes or more. Conventional optical disc apparatus such as a disc player can read and reproduce a digital data stream recorded on a read-only optical disc.
A user can also command an optical disc apparatus such as a disc recorder to record and store desired video and audio data on the rewritable optical disc or write-once optical disc. Moreover, the optical disc apparatus allows the user to watch and hear the data reproduced as high-quality video and audio data through a corresponding screen such as a screen of a peripheral device such as a television or the apparatus itself.
Where the user records and stores the data stream of an adult program on the optical disc using the optical disc apparatus such as the disc recorder, there exists a long felt need for recording and managing parental level information so that children or teenagers cannot arbitrarily reproduce or watch the data stream of the adult program recorded and stored on the optical disc. However, a parental level management method is not provided, for example, in a DVD-video recording format or a DVD-stream recording format.
A playback control method based on a BD-recording format reproduces a corresponding program or tide only where the user inputs a previously set password after a playback prohibition flag is set to each program or title. However, no parental level management method has been provided.
The above references are incorporated by reference herein where appropriate for appropriate teachings of additional or alternative details, features and/or technical background.